So you have written your blog post…and what next? We have already discussed what Content Promotion Plan is, now we’re gonna get to the Content Promotion Channels. WHERE should you promote your content and in what order? Read on!
1st Content Promotion Channel = Your own Social Media
This may seem obvious, but surprisingly many business owners forget about it. Post your content on *both* your company and your private social media profiles. Ask your family and close friends to share. Don’t be ashamed, tell them you’re really really determined to succeed with your business and you need a little help getting the word out. They should understand. And if you’re creating really *epic shit*, there’s really nothing to be ashamed of, if anything – something to be proud of. Heck, you even have the moral obligation to bring this epic content to the world. Create nothing less. If you feel your content is not ‘epic shit’ and you are feeling uncomfortable about sharing it – you know the answer. Go back to the drawing board. Don’t share until you are 100% confident you made ‘epic shit’.
Your ‘social media* sharing’ checklist:
*For more details on how to promote your content on the specific social platform, check for separate linked posts later this week.
- Facebook / own FB group/ Page / Personal profile
- Instagram – you can repurpose the main points in your blog post into a pretty infographic using professional photos and backgrounds completely for *FREE* on Canva (it’s an amazingly simple drag-and-drop graphic design tool that gives you photoshop-worthy results! No graphic design skills required!) – if you don’t find what you need for the background, you can look for beautiful high-resolution photos you can use *for free*, for commercial purposes and without attribution, and that are arranged by keywords on Unsplash! I know, sounds too good to be true, right?
- Pinterest – follow the same tactic as with Instagram;
- YouTube – if you’re posting live videos on Facebook, you can easily download them by right-clicking on the small arrow on the top after clicking on the video replay and playing it:
2. 2nd Content Promotion Channel – Groups (Facebook, LinkedIn) and Forums
Facebook and LinkedIn groups and forums are a powerful way to connect with your target audience that are usually ‘herding’ around their pain points / interests that your product / service is solving. Below, you find the complete process of promoting your content in groups (without getting kicked out – read more on how to promote your content in Facebook groups without getting the boot here)
- Find groups and forums relevant to your niche: type in ‘forum for + keywords describing your target customer’s’ / keywords relating to your target customer / their main problem on Facebook.
- Join them and introduce yourself – make sure you paint a personable picture (get nice headshots! see examples here and here and here) – focus on your personality, your story, what brings you to the group, what you bring to the group (value you can give to other people); not your business! Mention what you do by the way, in the casual way you talk about it when you meet new people in real life. That is -without links or any other promotional material. Imagine
- Respect the rules – don’t post self-promotion posts if not allowed (and in most groups that provide value and have engaged users they won’t be allowed! Otherwise the group would just change into one of those spammy places without any content or conversations.), sometimes you can post some freebies, but you need to do it in a smart way – presenting the story first, then offering something only for those that reach out to you – see how you can do it here.
- How to engage with the users and promote your content then? Join in conversations! Monitor conversations for keywords – respond to questions that the users are asking with your content that is answering them!
- How to do that? Monitoring several groups for conversations on specific topics can be quite challenging (read: impossible), so: if you want to 10 x your group promotion, use keyword monitoring tools:
FB Radar is a fairly new FREE tool I recently discovered that allows you to monitor FB groups you belong to for specific keywords and to set email alert when the keyword is mentioned in the group:
It’s super easy:
- You copy the URL of the group you want to monitor on Facebook:
2. You put it in the ‘Group ID Finder’ and copy the group ID:
3. You go to the ‘NEW ALERT’ tab and set up your new alert: what keyword you want to monitor the group for (here: marketing), you paste the group ID and decide how often you want to be getting notifications to your email:
4: And voila! That’s how your alert look like! Then simply follow the conversation in the group, and comment with your content / link / name of your blog/ FB group if necessary.
3. Syndication websites
Syndication websites are websites that allow you to submit your own content. Basically, they are a bit like guest post collectives, and that’s a great opportunity for you before you get enough domain authority to rank high on Google for your specific keywords.
BUT: there is a catch! If you publish the same content on platforms like Medium.com as on your own blog, you may get Google penalties for that.
So: you will need to re-work your content quite a bit before you syndicate it.
Repurpose before your post as: a checklist, shorter / more general / more in-depth post focusing on only one aspect you are covering in your more comprehensive post on the blog;
You can also re-format it as infographic, printable, free downloadable, podcast, video and many others.
Syndication websites worth visiting (tbc):
You will find a list of syndication websites worth visiting at Neil Patel’s Quicksprout here and at Shane Baker’s blog here.
4. Bookmarking sites
Bookmarking sites are places where people ‘park’ valuable content for later. Add your ‘evergreen’ posts e.g. problem-solution, how-to tutorial posts or ‘toolkit’ posts to the following social bookmarking sites:
5. Guest posting
Guest posting is a terrifically effective way to get backlinks (links to your blog/ website on another website that gets more visitors than you 😉 ) and get tons of traffic.
However, In order to get a guest post, you need to contact the blog / website owner (=perform outreach) and ask them for this favour first.
This can be quite tricky if you don’t have many visitors to your website / big name in the industry yet, but there are ways!
One of the best ways is to write ‘toolkit’ blog post that includes the blog / website tool / service / group / product of the blogger you are pitching to.
Also, offer a guest post in return.
Another way to guest post is to apply for a guest post at big and famous 😉 blogs such as:
The right blogs will again depend on your industry and target audience, so do your own research by googling ‘blogs accepting guest posting for …XYZ (content marketing / healthcare / spirituality / coaches) 🙂
Conclusion
Content Promotion Channels are plenty, and you need to factor them into your Content Promotion Plan with deadlines and tickboxes to make sure you make most of your content. I will prepare a separate spreadsheet for you soon, so if you haven’t yet – drop your email below so I can send it to you through my newsletter 😉
Pingback: Repurposing content for social media - useful tools to help you